Neil Gaiman is a one-cell amoeboid blogger

But in a nice way...

Wandered over to WeHo (West Hollywood) this afternoon for the West Hollywood Book Fair. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, having only been to huge book fairs in the WTC in S'pore, and the genteel, but overcrowded and over-priced yearly affair in Edinburgh. This felt more like a local event, which just happened to invite one of my favourite authors to a Q & A session.

It so happens that Neil Gaiman has his own blog, and has had some kind of online journal for the last decade (and more... even back to Compuserve days). Which prompted Heidi MacDonald to call him a proto-blogger, which led him to coin the above title...

Sadly, although I had lugged my brand new copy of Anansi Boys along, I wasn't lucky enough to get a ticket in the lottery for the book signing session. Ah well. Next time, eh? One wee thing NG let slip was that he's about the embark on resurrecting Jack Kirby's The Eternals. Talk about the perfect person for the project... I like the way NG has been updated mythology, bringing it into a 20th/21st C context. Funnily enough, another favourite author, TP, does the same, although he mixes it with pseudo, surreal and real science in an alternate universe. NG writes about a world that, on the surface, is no different from ours, but where weird and wonderful things can happen. TP writes in a fantasy environment, but read enough of his books and you realise how real world-based his characters and scenarios are (and scarily, he often write about zeitgeist events BEFORE they happen...).

Other things mentioned: he's No.1 on the NY Times list, is convinced his blog led to Anansi Boys being such a good seller, and has over a million blog readers. Now that's some online audience.

So, sorry to have missed out on getting my book signed. But should Neil Gaiman ever come across this post, I make a decent cuppa (definitely not the American way), so feel free to drop in the next time you're in LA...